Artists

Miłosz Pękala – vibraphone and percussion instruments player, improviser, performer and also assistant professor of Chopin University in Warsaw. He works especially with Mitch&Mitch, Andrzej Smolik, Kwadrofonik and many different groups and soloist as a session musician. He established Hob-beats Percussion Group and specialized in new music. Miłosz is very interested in minimal music and is also developing his skills in electronic music and creating own compositions. Last year he innitated and is a director of noise and electronic music festival Chrobot (Warsaw).

Magdalena Kordylasińska – is performing mostly with contemporary ensembles. She's also developing her repertoire which include new music often with using of tapes or electronic devices. She's performing together with Miłosz for over ten years both classical, contemporary and improvised music. Her main interest is in creating music, fusing and mixing different styles and also developing new sounds from the instrumnets. She's worked with various artist and performed around the world including South America, Israel and Europe. Magda and Miłosz are working of their own music with two pianists and as a quartet Kwadrofonik they became one of the most interesting contemporary group in Poland.

Hubert Zemler – percussionist and composer born in 1980 in Warsaw. In the years 1999 – 2004 he studied percussion at the Fryderyk Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw in the class of professor Edward Iwicki. As a percussionist he has toured around Europe, the United States, Turkey, the Middle East (Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon), Korea and Japan. In 2009 he won a bronze medal at the Delphic Games in South Korea in the category of solo percussion. Apart from classical genres, Zemler takes and eager interest in contemporary music. His repertoire is comprised of pieces by 20th and 21st century composers: “AIR” by Helmut Lechenman (performed during the opening concert of Warsaw Autumn Festival 2015 together with The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra in Katowice conducted by Alexander Liebreich), Steve Reich (he participated in the first Polish performance of Music for 18 Musicians), Tadeusz Wielecki, Zygmunt Krauze, Tomasz Sikorski, Cornelius Cardew, Zdzisław Piernik, Arturas Bumsteinas. In parallel with classical education and collaboration with symphonic orchestras he has been part of jazz bands, explored the arcane of improvisation and experimental music. Currently he is one of the most active percussionists of the Polish improvisation, experimental and free jazz scene. He performs together with representatives of a wide range of music genres, such as jazz, world music, rock, blues, improvisation. He is co-founder of bands associated with the Warsaw independent scene: Piętnastka (along with Piotr Kurek), Slalom (with Bartosz Weber and Bartłomiemiej Tyciński), Shy Albatross (with Raphael Rogiński, Natalia Przybysz and Miłosz Pękała, LAM jazz trio (with Wacław Zimpel and Krzysztof Dys), Pilokatabaza duo (with Paweł Szpura) and member of numerous projects combining 20th century music and improvisation. Zemler features his own repertoire and improvisations. His solo works were released on CDs: “Moped” ( Lado ABC, 2011), “Gostak & Doshes” (Bołt Records, 2014 and “Pupation of Dissonance” (Bołt Records, 2016). He has collaborated with such artists as: John Tilbury, Evan Ziporyn, Gyan Riley, Agusti Fernandez, Felix Kubin, Reinaldo Ceballo, Kwadrofonik quartet, Mitch&Mitch band, Kamil Szuszkiewicz, Raphael Rogiński, Wacław Zimpel, Kawalerowie Błotni collective.

Felix Kubin is one of electronic music’s most dynamic and versatile performers. A lovechild of the home recording era, his activities include futuristic pop, radio plays, electroacoustic music, and works for chamber orchestra. Kubin’s music is saturated with enthusiasm for disharmonic pop, industrial noise, and 20th-century avant-garde music. In the last 20 years, he has released a diverse array of albums and played over 100 electronic music festivals. He likes to move between high and low culture, clubs and concert halls, as his main concern is the shifting of contexts and expectations.

Felix has started at the age of 12 to compose electronic 4-track music with a synthesizer, an organ, a cheap casio keyboard and a drumcomputer. He wrote his own lyrics and performed live on Punk and New Wave festivals when he was 14. Since then he was fascinated by experimental pop music and especially electronic sound machines. Hamburg’s impresario Alfred Hilsberg (founder of the ZickZack label) had invited his band „Die Egozentrischen 2“ several times to play on his notorious festivals.

In the 1990s Felix turned to electroacoustic noise music and formed “Klangkrieg” with Tim Buhre. The group developped an atmospheric and „cinematographic“ style of music that became more abstract over the years. In 1998 he started to produce futuristic pop music..

Since 2001, Felix Kubin has been writing and producing radio plays for national radio stations WDR, BR, DLR, SWF and Vienna’s ORF Kunstradio. He has composed music for several film and theatre productions as well as chamber orchestras and runs his own independent record label Gagarin Records.

Apart from his music activities, Felix Kubin has been invited to give workshops and lectures at art institutions and universities in Europe, the USA, Canada and South America. From 2013-15 he taught sound art and experimental film music at the art academy HfBK in Hamburg.

Emilia Sitarz – pianist, graduate of the Academy of Music in Warsaw and post-graduate master classes in the piano duets at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater in Rostock. Winner of awards at numerous international competitions and prizes for cultural activity, including the Paszport Polityki, the Fryderyk and the Folk Phonograme of the Year, Gold Album awards. Co-founder, together with Bartek Wąsik, of the Lutosławski Piano Duo. In 2006 she began cooperating with the Polish percussion duo (Magdalena Kordylasińska and Miłosz Pękala). Together they form the Kwadrofonik quartet, in which they play 20th-century and folk music. She creates and hosts contemporary music educational concerts for children.

Emilia has been featured, also as a lecturer, at the following festivals: Polish Radio Festival, Chanterelle, Witold Lutosławski Forum, Folle Journee, Chopin in the Luxembourg Gardens, New Tradition Polish Radio Festival, Music Gardens, Warsaw Autumn, The Witold Lutosławski Festival Chain, Kwartesencja, Musica Polonica Nova, Colours of Poland, Spring Festival, Nova-Polska Festival (France), Scelsi Festival (Italy), Two Moors Festival (Great Britain), Londrina Festival (Brazil), Eden-Tamir Music Festival (Israel), Duetissimo (Lithuania), European Broadcasting Union Festival, Melez Festiwal (Germany). She has performed at Warsaw Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall, W. Lutosławski Hall, Chicago Symphony Center, Izumi Hall, the Berlin Philharmonic, Beijing Concert Hall, She initiated and artistically supervised, together with other members of the ensemble, the first edition of the Kwadrofonik festival. She is the originator of  a concert cycle „Hearing - concerts to be visited”.

Bartek Wąsik – pianist and arranger, winner of international music competitions and in 2014 awarded the Paszport Polityki prize, the Gwarancja Kultury award of the Polish Kultura TV channel, the Polak z Werwą poll award. Co-founder and member of the Lutosławski Piano Duo and the piano-percussion quartet Kwadrofonik. He has performed in almost all Europe, Asia and both Americas. In 2010 he made his recital debut at Carnegie Hall and Chicago Symphony Hall, performing arrangements of Chopin’s works lauded by critics as “absolutely brilliant”. In 2011 during his debut at the Berlin Philharmonic Hall he played along with the Kwadrofonik quartet The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky in his own arrangement for two pianos and percussion. His project “New Warsaw” – 12 new arrangements of songs about Warsaw, was enthusiastically acclaimed by critics and audience. Since then he has been closely collaborating with Stanisława Celińska and the Royal String Quartet. The project was awarded the Wdecha prize and the Gwarancja Kultury award of the Polish Kultura TV channel. In 2014 Bartek Konopka’s documentary “New Warsaw” was premiered. Bartek Wąsik is also winner of many phonographic awards: Fryderyk for the best recording of chamber music (Lutosławski Piano Duo) and the Folk Phonograme of the Year award (Kwadrofonik). In 2014 the joint project of the Kwadrofonik and Dorota Miśkiewicz “Lutosławski, Tuwim – Piosenki nie tylko dla dzieci” (“Lutosławski, Tuwim – Songs Not Only for Children”) attained gold record status. In the autumn of 2014 Bołt Records released a disc with works for two and four pianos by Tomasz Sikorski and Julius Eastman. In 2015 “Requiem Ludowe” (Folk Requiem”) was premiered - the fruit of the Kwadrofonik’s collaboration with singer Adam Strug. The record received the Folk Phonograme of the 2015 Year award.

Eve Egoyan is an artist whose medium is the piano. Her intense focus, command of the instrument, insightful interpretations, and unique programmes welcome audiences into unknown territory. Eve’s performances encompass extremely contrasting sensibilities: from Alvin Curran’s five-hour long Inner Cities to Erik Satie’s miniatures; from minimalist Simple Lines of Enquiry by Ann Southam to maximalist new complexity works by Michael Finnissy; from the barely audible to roaring overtone-filled resonances; from the rigorous interpretation of a score to free improvisation. Her recordings have received accolades including "Best Classical”, The Globe and Mail (1999), for her first solo CD, and more recently one of “Ten Top” classical discs, The New Yorker magazine (2009), and “Top Classical Disc of the Year”, The Globe and Mail (2011). Eve’s most recent disc, “Thought and Desire”, celebrates piano works by Linda Catlin Smith. EarWitness, an umbrella name given to a group of works commissioned by Eve exploring sound and visual elements, received Best Media Art Award from the Images Festival, 2016. Eve was selected as one of the 25 greatest Canadian classical pianists of all time by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Called a “brilliant musical scientist” and lauded for “creating a stir with listeners for her breathless imagination and ability to capture Gen-X and beyond generation”, JUNO-nominated composer Nicole Lizée creates new music from an eclectic mix of influences including the earliest MTV videos, turntablism, rave culture, Hitchcock, Kubrick, 1960s psychedelia and 1960s modernism. She is fascinated by the glitches made by outmoded and well-worn technology and captures these glitches, notates them and integrates them into live performance. Nicole’s compositions range from works for orchestra and solo turntablist featuring DJ techniques fully notated and integrated into a concert music setting, to other unorthodox instrument combinations that include the Atari 2600 video game console, omnichords, stylophones, Simon™, and karaoke tapes. In the broad scope of her evolving oeuvre she explores such themes as malfunction, reviving the obsolete, and the harnessing of imperfection and glitch to create a new kind of precision.

In 2001 Nicole received a Master of Music degree from McGill University. After a decade and a half of composition, her commission list of over 40 works is varied and distinguished: the Kronos Quartet, BBC Proms, the San Francisco Symphony, the National Arts Centre Orchestra, l’Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, CBC, Radio-Canada, NYC’s Kaufman Center, Powerplant, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, So Percussion, Eve Egoyan, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Tapestry Opera, Gryphon Trio, MATA Festival, TorQ Percussion, Fondation Arte Musica/Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, ECM+, Continuum, Soundstreams, SMCQ, Arraymusic, Megumi Masaki, Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony. Her music has been performed worldwide in renowned venues including Carnegie Hall (NYC), Royal Albert Hall (London), Muziekgebouw (Amsterdam) and Cité de la Musique (Paris) – and in festivals including the BBC Proms (UK), Huddersfield (UK), Roskilde (Denmark), Bang On a Can (USA), Classical:NEXT (Rotterdam), All Tomorrow’s Parties (UK), Barbican’s Sound Unbound (UK), Metropolis (Australia), X Avant (Canada), Luminato (Canada), Other Minds (San Francisco), C3 (Berlin), Ecstatic (NYC), Switchboard (San Francisco), Melos-Ethos (Slovakia), Casalmaggiore (Italy), and Dark Music Days (Iceland).

Nicole was awarded the prestigious 2013 Canada Council for the Arts Jules Léger Prize for New Chamber Music. She is a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellow (New York City/Italy) and recently received a 2016 Lucas Artists Fellowship Award (California). In 2015 she was selected by acclaimed composer and conductor Howard Shore to be his protégée as part of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Awards Mentorship Program. This Will Not Be Televised, her seminal piece for chamber ensemble and turntables, placed in the 2008 UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers’ Top 10 Works. Her work for piano and notated glitch, Hitchcock Études, was chosen by the International Society for Contemporary Music and featured at the 2014 World Music Days in Wroclaw, Poland. Additional awards and nominations include a Prix Opus (2013), a Dora Mavor Moore Awards in Opera, two Prix collégien de musique contemporaine, (2012, 2013) and the 2002 Canada Council for the Arts Robert Fleming Prize for achievements in composition

The performance of Polish Royal String Quartet is brimming with musical intelligence and finesse

The Royal String Quartet is one of the most dynamically developing string quartets in the world today. Its repertoire combines outstanding musical works of the past with contemporary music, bravely pushing musical genres. The Royal String Quartet receives enthusiastic reviews for its interpretations of classics but it also plays an important part in promoting lesser known Polish music. The Quartet collaborates with exceptional artists from different genres of music and is not afraid to cross over into the realm of pop culture.

The international career of the Royal String Quartet started with the invitation to join BBC Radio 3’s prestigious New Generation Artists scheme. With the nomination for the Royal Philharmonic Society Chamber Music Award, a Borletti-Buitoni Trust Award and success in competitions in Kuhmo and Banff, the Quartet has been a regular guest in the most renowned concert halls in the world (Wigmore Hall in London, Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Konzerthaus in Vienna and Berlin) and has also been invited to such international festivals as the BBC Proms, Aldeburgh, City of London and Schleswig Holstein. The RSQ has been Quartet-in-Residence at Queen’s University Belfast since Autumn 2012. The RSQ records mainly for Hyperion with albums of the music of Szymanowski, Lutosławski, Penderecki, Szymański, Mykietyn and Henryk Mikołaj Górecki. The latter was described by international critics as one of the most important interpretations of the repertoire. Covering over 10 albums, the discography of the Quartet shows versatility and passion for pushing the boundaries of classical music, jazz, pop or electronic music.

“To mix styles and genres, not to follow the beaten track, combine amazing artists who would never meet on the same stage or even on the same broadcasting channel on a regular day” is the motto for the annual series of Kwartesencja concerts organised by the RSQ in Warsaw. The Quartet’s guests have included Angela Hewitt, Mark Padmore, Urszula Kryger, Andrzej Bauer, Martin Fröst, Škampa Quartet, DJ Lenar, Warsaw Village Band and Kayah who claims that Kwartesencja: “is definitely an act of courage, but also a proof of an open mind and a lack of rigidity. It shows a soul devoted to music, not stereotypes.”

Kwadrofonik is the only quartet of its kind in Poland and one of a few in the world and was created out of two duos: Lutosławski Piano Duo (pianists Emilia Sitarz and Bartek Wąsik) and Hob-beats Percussion Duo (percussionists). Magdalena Kordylasińska i Miłosz Pękala). Kwadrofonik's career took of in 2006, when they spectacularly won the 9th Polish Radio Festival – Nowa Tradycja (New Tradition) – where the musicians received Grand Prix and the Audience Award. The critics hailed the quartet as superinnovative and blazing new trails for folk and world music. In 2007 Kwadrofonik became a laureate of a prestigious Special Award at the 3rd Contest of European Broadcast Union (EBU) in Bratislava (Slovakia). The award for modernity, innovation and loyalty to tradition was granted for the frst time in the history of this contest. In 2008 the debut CD Folklove – released by the Polish Radio – was enthusiastically welcomed by the media and in 2009 the musicians received Folk Phonogram of the Year – an award given by critics for the best folk/ world music CD in Poland. In 2010, during the celebration of the 200th anniversary of Frederic Chopin's birthday the quartet prepared a project with their own arrangements of Chopin's masterpieces – I was there, Frederic – presented at Carnegie Hall and Chicago Symphony Hall.

In 2011 Kwadrofonik had a debut in the Berliner Philharmonie where their own version of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring was presented. In 2012 quartet performed the frst time in Asia – Izumi Hall in Osaka and Chamber Music Festival in Beijing.

In 2013 the quartet met Polish jazz singer, Dorota Miśkiewicz and worked on their own arrangements of Lutosławski’s Children Songs. CD has been released by Sony BMG and in 2014 was awarded a gold record. In 2015 Kwadrofonik received the annual prestigious Polish award Paszport Polityki (Polityka’s Passport), presented by the weekly magazine Polityka since 1993, a cultural prize for achievements in classical music. In September 2015 Kwadrofonik ran the frst edition of their own contemporary chamber music festival in Warsaw – Kwadrofonik Festival.

The musicians also perform pieces originally composed for such an instrumental group. They gave also several world-premieres of the pieces composed especially for the quartet. They collaborated with many outstanding Polish composers, singers, musicians and visual artists.

Artur Rojek - leader, composer, songwriter, singer and promoter. Idol and authority (these two, contrary to appearances, do not often go hand in hand). a man holding monopoly on success. Whatever he does, it is all gain. In 1992-2012 co-founder and leader of Myslovitz with whom he released 9 albums; founder and member of Lenny Valentino. He has cooperated with Katarzyna Nosowska, Smolik, Pustki. Creator and artistic director of the OFF Festival. In 2014 he released his first solo album “Składam się z ciągłych powtórzeń”, which reached platinum status and was awarded numerous prizes, including the Fryderyk award for the Best Pop Album.